33: Chapter 33 The Bitter Struggle of the Regular Squad

The wilderness at dawn was filled with a layer of grayish-white fog.

On the edge of the thirty-story rooftop, the campfire lit the night before was reduced to a small pile of flickering embers. Su Chen stood against the wind; after a night of rest, the stamina he had consumed in yesterday's high-intensity battle had fully recovered. The Qi and blood of a Tier 1 Martial Artist within him flowed endlessly like a calm river.

"Boom—!"

Just as Su Chen was preparing to set off deeper into the ruins, an extremely violent explosion suddenly erupted from a street about three hundred meters away.

Immediately after, faint lights of spiritual energy flickered in the depths of the fog, faintly mixed with the shrill roars of humans and the manic growls of beasts.

"Are there other Martial Artists?"

Su Chen walked to the edge of the rooftop.

He did not hesitate, and his eyes instantly turned scarlet. Two black tomoe appeared in his pupils, spinning rapidly.

Sharingan activated.

The layers of thick fog before him seemed to be pushed aside by an invisible pair of hands within the ultimate vision of the Sharingan. His sight instantly zoomed in, locking clearly onto the street three hundred meters below, which was cluttered with abandoned vehicles parked in disarray.

It was a conventional mercenary squad consisting of five people.

A standard exploration configuration: one main shield bearer holding the front, two magic-type Martial Artists standing in the center, and two melee Martial Artists patrolling the flanks. Judging by the fluctuations of Qi and blood on their bodies, they were all between low-level and mid-level Martial Masters, making them a fairly strong elite team.

But at this moment, this squad had fallen into a desperate situation with zero chance of survival.

Surrounding them were fifteen large, Tier 2 exotic beasts covered in thick, grayish-white bone plates—'Iron-Armored Wolves.'

"Hold the line! Tighten the formation! Don't let them cut off the flanks!"

The squad leader was a bald, burly man holding a heavy tower shield; his eyes were bloodshot as he held the front line stubbornly. He poured the Qi and blood within him into the shield without reservation, supporting a huge, pale blue spiritual energy light screen.

"Captain, there are too many! These beasts aren't afraid of death at all!"

The melee Martial Artist on the left flank swung the battle blade in his hand, hacking fiercely at the head of an Iron-Armored Wolf that lunged at him.

"Clang!"

With a crisp sound, the battle blade was deflected, even chipping a notch. And that Iron-Armored Wolf merely shook its head; not even a white mark was left on its grayish-white bone plates.

"Blast them with spiritual energy! Lin Zi, Zhao Xue, stop saving your mana! Throw all your ultimate moves at them!" the captain roared hoarsely through gritted teeth.

The two magic-type Martial Artists protected in the center were drenched in sweat, their hands forming seals rapidly.

"Explosive Fireball!"

"Wild Wind Blades!"

Two sharp cries rang out.

The next second, two astonishingly large orange-red fireballs, mixed with a dozen sharp, crescent-shaped Wind Blades, whistled over the captain's head and slammed fiercely into the densest part of the wolf pack ahead.

On the rooftop.

Su Chen looked down at the battlefield below from his high vantage point, his eyes calm as water.

"The display is certainly impressive."

He gave his assessment in his heart. This was the most conventional combat style in the High Martial World; Martial Artists relied heavily on their awakened elemental talents and loved using large-scale, high-consumption spiritual energy attacks to carpet-bomb the area.

On the street below.

"Rumble!"

The fireballs and Wind Blades exploded amidst the wolf pack. Flames soared into the sky, and the shockwave from the explosion overturned several abandoned cars nearby; the display was extremely flashy.

"Did we hit them?" the female mage named Zhao Xue stared at the center of the explosion, panting, with a glimmer of expectation in her eyes.

However, when the smoke and dust cleared, the cruel reality struck everyone in the squad like a heavy blow to the head.

Those dozen-plus Iron-Armored Wolves stepped over the burning ruins and walked slowly out of the sea of flames.

They shook the ash off their bodies, and apart from some pitch-black scorch marks left on their mutated bone plates, not a single one had fallen!

It was impossible to inflict fatal wounds!

"How is that possible..." Zhao Xue took a step back in despair, her voice trembling, "This was a full-power strike from a C-rank talent!"

"The bone plates of these Iron-Armored Wolves have been mutated by Abyss energy; their resistance to elemental spiritual energy is too high!" the other mage gritted his teeth, "Our attacks are just scratching them!"

The Laws of the High Martial World were just that cruel.

The higher the level of the exotic beast, the stronger its Abyss resistance. Relying too much on flashy elemental talents, once you fail to break their defense, the outcome is a one-sided slaughter.

"Awoo—!"

A Tier 2 Peak Iron-Armored Wolf King, the largest one with several Abyss bone spurs protruding from its skull, let out a long howl.

The wolf pack stopped testing them and launched a full-scale attack simultaneously.

A dozen heavy bodies turned into grayish-white chariots, slamming fiercely into the captain's spiritual energy light screen.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The dull sounds of impact continued one after another.

The captain groaned, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. The tower shield in his hand let out a moan of unbearable stress, and the pale blue spiritual energy shield was instantly covered in cracks like a spiderweb.

"Captain!"

"My spiritual energy is bottoming out... We can't hold on!"

Panic and despair spread rapidly through the squad. This was completely a dead end with no hope in sight.

Three hundred meters away, on the edge of the high building.

Su Chen watched the crumbling defensive line and chose not to continue "watching the show."

He activated his Two-Tomoe Sharingan, not to watch a show, but to lethally deconstruct this group of exotic beasts in an extremely short time.

"Covered in insulating bone plates; forcing an elemental bombardment is indeed a waste of effort."

Su Chen's gaze followed the flow of dark red Qi and blood inside the Iron-Armored Wolf, tracking it all the way up.

Finally.

His sight locked firmly onto the neck area of the wolf pack.

"The junction between the skull and the spine, at the third cervical vertebra."

Su Chen narrowed his eyes.

In the vision of the Sharingan, there was a tiny gap only half an inch wide there. The grayish-white bone plates did not fully close there. More importantly, the Abyss energy inside all the Iron-Armored Wolves underwent an extremely brief convergence and transit when passing through that gap.

That was the absolute blind spot of their defense, and also the core hub of their Qi and blood circulation!

For an exotic beast moving at high speed, ordinary Martial Artists simply couldn't see this gap, let alone aim precisely at it. But under the Sharingan's dynamic capture that slowed everything down, this gap was as conspicuous as a searchlight in the dark night.

"Found it."

Su Chen didn't even draw the heavy iron blade on his back.

To deal with bone armor that relied purely on physical defense, the most primitive, violent blunt strike was the best armor-piercing hammer.

One only needed to cut into the blind spot, compress the hardness of Armament Haki to a single point, and pierce into that half-inch-wide gap to instantly shatter its brain nerves!

In the same second that Su Chen completed the lethal deduction in his mind.

On the street below, a sudden change occurred.

"Crack!"

Accompanied by a crisp shattering sound, the spiritual energy shield the captain had been struggling to support finally reached its limit and exploded into spots of light filling the sky.

"Pfft!"

The captain was shaken by the backlash, vomiting blood; his arms fractured, and his tall body fell heavily to the ground.

"Roar!"

The Tier 2 Peak Iron-Armored Wolf King roared excitedly. Its massive body, like a heavy armored vehicle, ignored the weak fireballs thrown by the mage and crushed the tower shield on the ground.

Foul-smelling saliva dripped from its sharp fangs.

The Wolf King opened its bloody maw, lunging straight for the captain's throat to bite down!

"Third! Take them and go!"

The captain closed his eyes in despair, letting out his final roar before death.

Zhao Xue and Lin Zi sat paralyzed on the ground, their eyes splitting with rage, but they were powerless to change the outcome.

At the critical moment.

On the high-rise rooftop three hundred meters away.

Su Chen moved.

He didn't take the stairs, nor did he look for pipes to climb down.

He walked to the edge of the thirty-story rooftop, stepped forward with his right foot, and his body fell straight down toward the tragic battlefield below!

The wild wind whistled shrilly in his ears.

Su Chen was like a black meteorite falling from the sky; the acceleration due to gravity made his falling speed reach a terrifying level.

At the moment when he was fifty meters from the ground.

Su Chen's falling body suddenly tensed up.

He didn't step on solid ground; instead, the muscles in his legs contracted crazily in mid-air at a terrifying frequency, and he suddenly erupted with an extremely violent force against the void of air beneath his feet.

[Marine Six Styles: Shave]!

"Bang—!!!"

A terrifying sonic boom, like thunder on a dry land, exploded in mid-air!

A circle of visible white air waves spread out from under Su Chen's feet.

The terrifying potential energy from the high-speed fall was forcibly twisted by a reaction force that was extreme and brutal the moment he kicked the air, turning into an extreme thrust that sent him diving diagonally forward and downward!

On the street below.

The captain, who was closing his eyes and waiting for death, suddenly felt the sky above him darken.

Before the Wolf King's fangs could touch his skin, an extremely sharp tearing sound suddenly came from the air above!

A black afterimage tore through the thick fog as if teleporting.

Carrying the overwhelming momentum of a fall from a hundred-meter height, it descended without warning directly above the head of that Iron-Armored Wolf King!

Su Chen was in mid-air.

His right leg was raised high like a black battle axe that could split the heavens and the earth.

The Sharingan locked firmly onto the half-inch-wide gap at the third cervical vertebra of the Wolf King.

"Armament Haki: Hardening!"

Su Chen whispered in his heart.

The pitch-black Haki instantly wrapped around his entire right leg. Not only that, at the moment of the strike, Su Chen tried to forcibly compress and permeate this materialized will inward.

Without the slightest hesitation.

Aiming at the Wolf King's indestructible skull.

He stomped down fiercely!

The hunt begins.